Switched from Ubuntu to Debian yesterday

Why switch?

I played with the idea of switching for quite a while. Having switched my daily driver from Windows maybe 6-9 Months ago I made many mistakes in the meantime.

Good and bad

This may have led to a diminshed experience with ubuntu but all in all, I was very pleased to see that Linux works as a daily driver. Still, I was unhappy with the kind of dumbed down gnome experience.

Problems

There were errors neither I nor people I asked could fix and the snap situation on ubuntu (just the fact that they’re proprietary, nothing else).

Installation

Installing debian (and kde) was easier and harder than I expected. The download mirror I used must not have been great although its very close to my location because it took ages although my internet connections is good.

Apps

Since I switched to Linux, I toned down my app diet a lot. Installing all my apps from ubuntu was as easy as writing a short list and going through discover. Later I added flatpak which gave me a couple apps not available through discover (such as fluffychat). The last two I copied directly as appimages.

Games

I was scared that the „old kernel“ of stable debian would be a problem. As it turns out, everthing works great so far, a lot better than on ubuntu which might or might not be my fault.

Instability

Kde does have some quirks that irritate me a bit like installing timeshift (because I tried network backups which dont work with it and the native backup solution does not seem to accept my sambashare) led to a window I could only close by rebooting.

Boot time

What does feel a bit odd is the boot process. After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login. This feels a lot longer than ubuntu did. Its probably easy to change in some config but its also something that should be obvious.

Summary

So far I‘m incredibly happy although I ran into initramfs already probably because of timeshift which I threw out again. I might do a manual backup if nothing else works. My games dont freeze or stutter which is nice. All apps I had on ubuntu now work on debian and no snaps at all.

TL;DR: If you feel adventurous, debian and kde are a pretty awesome mix and rid you of the proprietary ubuntu snap store. It also doesnt tell you that you can get security upgrades if you subscribe to ubuntu pro. Works the same if not better.

PunkFlame,

(begging forgiveness, I haven’t read the comments yet).

Regarding backups - I started with using Ubuntu and its Backup application. This application is a front end for a command line package called Duplicity. One of the things that annoyed me about the backup app was that I couldn’t work out how to reschedule the scheduled backup.

Taking control of my own backup setup was the answer. Learn about bash scripting so you can create a short bit of code to handle your backups. Read up a little on duplicity, read up a little on mounting remote file shares, read up a little on setting up an ssh key for encrypting your backup.

This may be an heretical thing to say but I found ChatGPT quite useful in answering these questions (as always with anything you get from an LLM, double check it’s answers against reliable sources).

Zamundaaa, (edited )

Unfortunately Debian stable doesn’t ship our bugfix releases after the major Debian version gets tagged - KDE Plasma in Debian is currently at 5.27.5, and 5.27.10 was released upstream two months ago.

In other words, you’ll be experiencing bugs that have long been fixed… I’d advise to stay away from Debian for KDE Plasma because of that. If you want a Debian based distro with a good KDE Plasma experience, KUbuntu is likely a better choice, even with forced snaps. If you don’t need Debian though I’d recommend taking a look at Fedora KDE or Arch (derivatives).

haui_lemmy,

Thanks for the heads up. I do get that faster updates mean a lot to some folks. There is always an argument for more up to date software but one needs to compromise sometimes. Using debian has been great so far and its working better than ubuntu (which might be a configuration issue). I’ll update if stuff starts breaking.

Loucypher,

Man, I feel you. Sometimes you just want to get on with your life without babysitting the OS. Debian will stay out of your way and just work. Enjoy it!

comicallycluttered, (edited )

After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login.

Yeah, the reason for this is that sometimes Debian doesn’t enable Plymouth splash screens by default, so you just see the text stuff. It actually annoys me a bit.

Not on my computer at the moment, so I can’t remember the exact packages you might need, but if I recall, they should be plymouth-themes and kde-config-plymouth (so that you can choose the splash screen theme in your system settings). You can also find other themes online, but I forgot the name of that website where all the stuff is. Pling? I think it’s that.

Anyway, once you have the themes installed, you need to sudo edit /etc/default/grub and append “quiet splash” (with the quotes) to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= (“quiet” might already be there).

You can also change the value of GRUB_TIMEOUT= in that file to whatever your preference might be for the duration of grub’s boot menu, but there might be other things you need to adjust in order to hide it completely and still be able to access it if necessary.

After that, run sudo update-grub so that it’s using the new config and choose whichever theme you want in the system settings.

Alternatively, grub-customizer is a GUI app that you can install to do all of the above (which will also update grub when you save your changes). Just don’t touch anything that’s not relevant. Stick to just the duration of the grub boot menu and add the splash parameter. Ignore boot priority, etc.

It should feel less “slow” to start up once all that’s sorted.

Churbleyimyam,

I did this recently but for gnome. There are some cool custom splashes at gnome look - maybe there is something similar for KDE too.

IronKrill, (edited )

I tried installing Debian recently as well but didn’t get too far into it. I was annoyed though that I wasn’t able to use sudo, so I went to add myself to the sudo group and it told me the command didn’t exist… I looked it up and realised that /usr/bin wasn’t on the bashrc path. Extremely fixable but something I never ran into on other distros, made me nervous how many other tweaks I may have to do.

I was simultaneously testing Lubuntu and ended up sticking with that after following install instructions for another app kept complaining about bookworm errors. Perhaps the Debian version was too new?..

haui_lemmy,

I suppose it depends on a lot of things. Errors are pretty common once you start installing a lot of apps in any distro imo. Especially unstable and sid are more up to date but as the name suggests less stable.

JoMiran,
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

I have been happy with Pop!_OS but the idea of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is very tempting.

haui_lemmy,

I have not tried pop os yet. Whats the selling point again?

JoMiran,
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

The biggest is the baked in support for nVidia GPUs, but their DE has a lot of work done to it for usability purposes. No real advances have been made over the past few years to really set it apart again, but there is a massive overhaul coming that will make it one of a kind again.

haui_lemmy,

Sounds promising. I‘ll keep an eye out. Thanks for explaining.

pelotron,
@pelotron@midwest.social avatar

Keep an eye out for Cosmic Desktop release news.

Loucypher,

LMDE is really great. Just migrated an old 2013 iMac to it today. Everything works out of the box. Everything easy like you can expect from Mint and stable like on Debian. Difficult not to love.

The only thing you have to like is Cinnamon.

Frederic,

Ubuntu is Debian anyway. Why not installing MX (based on Debian too) with XFCE, it is the best experience I have had.

I come from good old LFS from the 90s and for me, a distro is just a kernel with some GNU utils, a window manager, and a way to get packages (which is about the only diff between “distro”)

haui_lemmy,

Makes sense. This is also what I deduced after installing arch in a vm. Its basically just a couple options. It would be awesome to have a distro where you can just mix and match all the things.

Celediel,

It would be awesome to have a distro where you can just mix and match all the things.

You may be interested in Bedrock Linux.

haui_lemmy,

Thanks for mentioning it! I‘ll check it out!

BaalInvoker,

Next step: try Arch Linux

haui_lemmy,

I did that, on a vm though. I learned a ton and would not want to miss the experience.

But arch is absolutely not something I would daily drive even if you paid me for it. It’s like driving a car which you have assembled from parts only. It works but you never know it it will start this morning.

jao,
@jao@lemy.lol avatar

I am running an Arch based distro called Garuda, and it’s been perfectly fine for me.

haui_lemmy,

Although I get that arch based distros can work great, they’re not arch, same as ubuntu is not debian.

But I‘m happy that you’re happy.

drndramrndra,

Slapping an installation wizard on top of arch doesn’t make it a different distro…

haui_lemmy,

I have no idea how much difference there is… debian and ubuntu are not the same, one could argue that ubuntu and mint are very close but still they are different.

4vr,

Installed Arch couple of weeks back and was surprised how easy it had become once I overcame the first hurdle of connecting to wifi from command line.

Only thing I’m not happy with is the font rendering in Firefox. Hard to say if it is Arch or Firefox.

haui_lemmy,

Pretty sure its arch as other distros dont have that from my experience.

BaalInvoker,

Dude, I daily drive my Arch for a few years and it does not gave me any major issue until today

It’s a myth that Arch is not stable

If you don’t do anything crazy, it will be stable, exactly like any other distro

Prunebutt,

Maybe if you don’t touch the AUR, or at least: if you’re really careful with it. But who could resist this tasty, tasty, unstable forbidden fruit of random software?

BaalInvoker,

Yeah… AUR is what Arch community likes the most, but also what makes Arch unstable the most.

I don’t use AUR at all. I’m always on Flatpak…

drndramrndra,

If you don’t do anything crazy, it will be stable, exactly like any other distro

Tell me you haven’t used a stable distro without telling me you haven’t used a stable distro.

Do you know why Debian, a stable distro, releases noncritical updates every ~2 years? Because they test their packages and make sure grub doesn’t release a faulty update and leave your machine in an unbootable state.

BaalInvoker,

Stable for what, buddy?

Debian for sure is stable for a server and Arch may not be as stable.

However if we are talking about a home use, Arch is stable enough. And with up to date packages.

I rather use Arch Linux with up to date packages then Debian with 2+ years out dated packages for my daily non-server use.

You’re not taking into account the use case. It’s simplistic to say that “Arch is not stable”. It is and it isn’t, depending on use case.

The same for Debian, I can say it’s outdated, and again, it is and it isn’t, depending on use case.

If you wanna play latest games, use latest softwares and be on the edge of the latest versions, Debian sucks. If you wanna a stable rock solid server, with all packages well tested, well, Arch sucks.

Just don’t be an asshole saying that X is better than Y dismissing the use case.

All I said at the beginning was: time to try Arch Linux.

But some of you can’t live with different opinions and downvoted my comment, as well tried to refute my comment. But, well, I wasn’t even arguing, I was doing a suggestion. So, yeah, do whatever you want, I don’t care

drndramrndra,

If stability is a spectrum, you’ve got to admit that Arch is on one end and Debian on the other.

I ran it on multiple devices for like 3 years. It breaks. Updates are stressful, especially if you have horrible internet in a foreign country.

Arch has many benefits, but it’s dishonest to call it stable. No amount of relativism will change that.

haui_lemmy,

Sorry but you’re oot. People who switch to linux today are complete noobs compared to you and will do a ton of things you consider crazy.

The other distros will accept this or prevent it but arch wont even boot to the DE if you dont follow the wiki to the letter. I had to reaearch some stuff since I didnt get it from just the wiki and still got repeated freezes although I‘m a sysadmin for many years and have two linux servers (one of them for two years) which make no problems at all.

Arch is a pro distro, feel free to prove otherwise.

BaalInvoker,

I’m suggesting it to you, not to a completely noob. You know this caveats and probably will be fine

Anyway, use archinstall script. You don’t have to follow the wiki to the letter anymore.

haui_lemmy,

I get that. But people will take „its a myth that arch is not stable“ out of context. It is absolutely not as stable as any other OS, at least if you use the wiki. I have not known about the script until recently.

itchick2014,

I agree that Arch is a pro distro. I do IT tech support, have background with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Knoppix, and Fedora and installing Arch was hard mode for me. Would I do it again? Hell yeah. Would I recommend it as a second or third install experience? Nope. Too many distros that are beginner to intermediate friendly. That said, I will forever have a fondness for pacman just because I like the name. I am still working out device drivers and a few smaller details a month later. Also, the wiki is written by someone who doesn’t do good technical writing. It assumes too much back end knowledge. I kept having to follow blog or article posts and still had to sandwich those snippets I got together hoping something worked…and again, I have some background knowledge of Linux already. An absolute beginner would be totally lost.

haui_lemmy,

You put this a lot better than I could. Its exactly what my experience was as well.

itchick2014,

Glad I am not alone, though I follow unixporn and other communities so was very familiar with the overall sentiments about Arch before diving in. I look forward to when I know a bit more about it. I put it on a laptop I specifically bought to install Linux alongside the existing windows install (LG Gram) so I knew I had nothing to lose and my whole intention was to learn. I would have never installed Arch on a machine I actually need to use at this point. I am lucky that I got as far as I did so quickly. lol.

AnneBonny,

KDE is the default DE for Debian these days?

haui_lemmy,

No, gnome is. But debian in opposition to ubuntu gives you a choice at install. You can use gnome, kde, cinnamon and a couple others which I forgot.

AnneBonny,

debian in opposition to ubuntu gives you a choice at install

That’s nice.

haui_lemmy, (edited )

Indeed. It feels very mature and no nonsense like, all over. The only thing that bothers me a bit are some „qol things“ like being able to switch mirrors if you made a bad choice or to easily choose german keyboard while leaving the OS in english for easier troubleshooting online.

So the pattern here seems to be „debian shows that it is community made and you can help make it better in opposition to ubuntu which is commercial and your participation helps both the community and the company“

worldsayshi, (edited )

Is it gnome 3 (shell)?

haui_lemmy,

I have no idea. Sorry.

worldsayshi,

After a bit of searching I think people generally mean gnome 3 when they say gnome and gnome 2 is now known as Mate.

haui_lemmy,

Ah! Got it! Thanks.

cybersandwich,

I get that you have the choice at install on debian which is nice, but the flavors and choices of Ubuntu (eg kubuntu ) are super readily available when making your install media. And I unless you are making it a game time decision as you go through the installer, which I doubt most people are, this seems like an incredibly trivial distinction.

haui_lemmy,

Thats viewing it only from one angle. People who are not totally familiar with what desktop environments are might not even consider kubuntu, lubuntu or xubuntu since they are viewed as seperate OSes by some.

Having this menu is very easy to implement but the possibilities are great.

cybersandwich,

Fair point

GravitySpoiled,

Thx for the post. Nice reading your experience.

Fluffychat flathub flathub.org/apps/im.fluffychat.Fluffychat

haui_lemmy,

Thanks. I failed to mention that I found fluffychat from flathub shortly after through their website. :) but thanks for mentioning it.

wildflower,

It also doesnt tell you that you can get security upgrades if you subscribe to ubuntu pro

Wow, do Ubuntu not have security updates in the “free” version?

where_am_i,

you hit apt update and get an add for Ubuntu pro. Invasive ads in my linux? no thanks.

bjorney,

This is disingenuous on OPs part.

All LTS releases get 5 years of updates. Ubuntu pro (which is free for non-commercial users FYI) extends the LTS support window to 10 years, which is 5 years more than any other Linux distribution I know of

haui_lemmy,

Sorry, I meant „Additional security updates“. its not very useful for normal users and canonical is targeting enterprises with it but looking at it every day without a non hacky way to disable it just wore on me.

Rustmilian, (edited )
@Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

All of them receive security updates.
Wether you’re a pro user or not only matters if you’re an LTS user.

waigl,

With the LTS versions being the best and obvious choice for your average non-technical user who just wants to get some work done…

atzanteol,

You get 5 years of security updates with Ubuntu lts.

waigl,

And constant non-optional pop-ups nagging you to upgrade to Ubuntu Pro during those five years. I’d actually be kinda okay with it if it were only after, an if just as a reminder that, hey, the LTS period is over, you need to switch to the next LTS release now.

atzanteol,

What? I see no such thing. Is that after the initial 5 years or something?

waigl, (edited )

This is on Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS, so well within the 5 year window. I’m complaining because I kept getting frantic calls from people using that who didn’t know what was going on.

Rustmilian,
@Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

The normal 6 month stable releases are perfectly fine. Infact they can be the better choice depending on hardware age.

waigl,

Depends a lot on what kind of user. I specified “non-technical” with a reason. I have, in the past, recommended Ubuntu to a small number of friends and family members. These are people who aren’t particularly comfortable using computers in the best of times. They very much don’t need the newest, best and most shiny versions of everything. They need to do billing, taxes, correspondance, email and various other tasks related to their small business, they need that to work reliably, and if at all possible, to work exactly the same way as it did the last five years. And if there is any pop-up they don’t immediately understand (for example because it’s in English instead of their native language, yes that still happens in Ubuntu quite a bit), they will call me on the phone.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to support non-technical end-users, but for some of them, even something as seemingly trivial as a menubar that has moved from the top to the side can be issue that needs explaining and training. For that kind of user, I really do want to postpone all updates beyond pure bug and security fixes for as long as reasonably possible. Five years sounds reasonable. Six months does not.

Rustmilian, (edited )
@Rustmilian@lemmy.world avatar

Ubuntu is not Arch Linux. The 6 month release doesn’t give you the “the newest, best and most shiny versions of everything” in the first place.
If they don’t like change so much as to not being able to handle some minor UI updates, then their better off using a Chromebook lol.
You’d just be making it harder for them move from the outdated software in the long run, because literally everything changes between moving LTS from the 5y EOL period instead of gradually over each major normal 6 month releases.

sturlabragason,

noobient.com/…/canonical-starts-charging-for-ubun…

waigl, (edited )

They do, including those that are in Debian, but they also have an additional source of faster security updates developed in house, which they hold back from the free path in favor of the pro package.

Personally, I feel a bit torn about this. On the one hand, this should be, officially at least, purely an additional service on top of what’s available in the baseline distro, and isn’t taking anything away from that.

On the other hand, I strongly disagree with holding back security fixes from anyone, ever, for any reason. Also, the claim that it will never take away anything from the free base distro is at least a little bit suspect. I would not be surprised if the existence of the pro path were to gradually erode the quality and timelyness of the base security upgrade path over time. Also, Ubuntu is now very annoying about nagging you to upgrade to pro, and the way to disable that is fairly involved and very much non-official. The whole thing goes against what I expect from a F/OSS operating system. I don’t quite understand why this topic hasn’t been a much bigger issue in Linux circles yet. It certainly doesn’t sit right with me…

solidgrue, (edited )
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

Not that I’m a fan of Ubuntu here (I generally don’t run it when I can run anything else), but I do want to say I think you’ve missed the point of the Pro tier.

Ubuntu releases two stable versions a year which are supported for 2 years or so. This is like a slow rolling distribution, and makes the newest software’s available. It receives regular security updates from upstream, from Canonical, and from backports, again for up to about 2 years. Most users install this version.

Ubuntu LTS editions are similar to the above, but receive all the same security updates for 5 years instead of 2. These distributions are generally targeted for Enterprise users who value stability over having the newest software, and for whom upgrading comes with significant time, expense and risk. The 5 year window is customary among other distros, and is largely supported by and throughout the Dev community.

Ubuntu LTS Pro editions extend the LTS support editions for an additional 5 years, meaning a Pro distro enjoys 10 years of security updates from upstream, backports, and from Canonical where needed. Canonical might even open source their fixes back into upstream for other maintainers and distros to use, depending on the situation. However, since Canonical is providing the work, they charge subscription fees to cover their costs for it from their target audience: Enterprises who can’t or REALLY don’t want to upgrade

Why an Enterprise might not want to upgrade has to do with risk and compliance. Corporate IT security is a different world, where every bit of software may need to be reviewed, assessed, tested and signed-off upon. Major software upgrades would need to be recertified to mitigate risk and ensure compliance, which takes significant time and expense to complete in good faith. Not having to do it every 2 or 5 years is money in the bank, especially when the environment doesn’t introduce new requirements very often.

Canonical is meeting a market demand with their Pro tier by allowing these customers to spend a fraction of their recertification costs on a software subscription. It’s overall good for the ecosystem because you have what amounts to corporate sponsors pumping money into keeping older packages maintained for longer. This let’s them keep using the same software distro all the rest of us can use for free.

I’m not shy about calling bullshit on ANY distro that operates in bad faith, and they all get into some BS from time to time. Nevertheless, Canonical are acting in good faith on this, and are merely collecting money for their time and skill to provide maintenance on FOSS packages that might otherwise go unmaintained.

tl;dr: Pro tier is for Enterprise customers who need extra-long term support and are willing to pay for it. Canonical is meeting a market demand so they can remain competitive for use in those environments, which is good for everyone. It’s benign. Keep the pitchforks sharp and the torches dry for another day.

edit: typos

waigl,

Pro tier is for Enterprise customers who need extra-long term support and are willing to pay for it. Canonical is meeting a market demand so they can remain competitive for use in those environments, which is good for everyone. It’s benign

Then please show me the button (and I mean button, not command-line exclusive settings or config file entries in /etc, and certainly not unofficial trickery like third party repositories that replace Ubuntu advantage packages with an empty decoy) that says “Thank you, I don’t need Ubuntu Pro, please stop nagging me about it”.

solidgrue,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, I never said they weren’t absolute prats about invading user space with advertising their bullshit. The Lens fiasco, Snaps, the popup warnings in apt breaking scripts, and the lack of UI toggles to easily disable those nag messages are all reasons I run other distros. There’s a big Mint colored button to turn on the Ubuntu experience without the nagging.

You have other choices that do no not shove that bullshit in your face. Canonical is gonna canonical. Nobody said you have to play their game.

My point was they are not withholding anything community-based from anyone. They are entitled to charge for their original work, even they are pushy about it. They even abide by the license and distribute it the changes when complete, but they’re not gonna just do it for giggles.

Chewy7324, (edited )

The additional Ubuntu Pro security updates are also open source, which means open source maintainers are free to adopt them for the regular security updates (and some do).

If Canonical didn’t charge for those additional security updates they wouldn’t be able to pay for developing them, which would result in only core packages getting patched again. Also it’s possible to make an account and get them for free on a few devices, so it’s really not so bad. This way of doing things is better than what RedHat is doing with RHEL.

If Canonical restricted maintainer from applying Canonicals patches, I’d change my opinion. For me I don’t need security updates that badly, so I’m fine with Debian, NixOS (or Ubuntu non-Pro).

waigl,

That would be all absolutely fine and dandy if I could easily just opt out in a way that makes the system stop bothering me about it. But I can’t.

savbran, (edited )

You could try Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) it has timeshift installed in the live iso, useful to restore a system when it’s unbootable. Anyway it doesn’t come with KDE but Cinnamon or XFCE.

For me Debian or LMDE is good for a home server due to not continuous package update, just major security an important ones.

For a Deskop or laptop in my opinion Fedora KDE or Gnome is the best experience.

N0x0n,

For me Debian or LMDE is good for a home server due to not continuous package update, just major security an important ones.

You can have a similar experience from a rolling release with debian !

Trixie (testing) or Cid (unstable) or backports !

Backports seems promising because that’s the version of the package going into the next debian release.

dasenboy,

Don’t you mean Sid (unstable) ? :)

haui_lemmy,

Interesting! I have not tried fedora yet. I really like to be able to get some time off gnome for now though. Is there a particular difference between debian based distros and fedora? I cant really say I know them. The biggest differences I see make the desktop environments. Everything else, like package managers are also flexible.

JubilantJaguar,

There is all but no difference if you use a desktop environment. That’s where the variation is.

haui_lemmy,

Thanks for pointing that out. I had a feeling that this would be the conclusion but I‘m still open to learn more.

pelotron,
@pelotron@midwest.social avatar

It also uses the Red Hat RPM package format and a different package manager. But it just amounts to a few different commands to learn if you manage packages on the command line.

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